I wish her a lucky passage

Ten years ago, I started a project—a design project, a “book,” neatly foreshadowing my career as yearbook editor—intended as a graduation present for several friends in the 8th grade. Words, pictures, quotations, arranged and selected by me, it was designed to bring a tear or a smile to my friends’ faces; to try to tell them, even then, just how much they meant to me. I suppose I was beyond my years and full of affect for a 13-year-old...

And I didn’t finish the project. I forgot about it entirely, and I’m finding the remnants of it now, in a manila envelope on a dusty bookshelf.

It’s funny to find here, day after day, how little has changed. I still love books and wise quotations and designing things and starting projects and I still can’t ever tell my friends to my satisfaction just how much I care about them. And I still don’t finish things. I won’t dwell on it now, but the list is very long. My shelves are full of books with markers permanently wedged at page 67 or 123. For every book I finish, I start two ill-fated ones. But, I've earnestly been trying to curb all that lately. In the last year, I’ve finished nearly every book I’ve started, and I’m trying to read only one or two at once.

Maybe this massive room-cleaning project is just the task I needed. I’ve been reverting back to my old-self—pre-China, pre-London, pre-college, maybe even pre-high school—when I was supremely content to retreat to my space, surrounded by my books and small objects. I am learning how to be an introvert again. But, this time around, I’m also trying to slowly reduce the weight of the house.

I imagine picking up our house by the ears and dropping it onto an old brass scale to see how much it weighs. How many tons do my books and shoes and ceramics and grand piano contribute? What about mom’s books and magazines and pictures and seashells? And how much is dad’s share—his piles of “useful” pack-rat objects that fill all the hidden spaces and spill out into the common areas? I’m trying to reduce my share because that’s the only part I can change; the only piece I have any control over; the only area where I have any say. (It’s figurative, really.)

So I’ve spent a lot of time sifting through my old treasures lately. Uncovering them and running my fingers over their dusty, glassy surfaces brings on waves of honey-soaked nostalgia. And strangely… forgetfulness.

I discovered a small, porcelain jewelry box with two doves on top that was filled with small objects: a black plastic spider ring, a piece of green foam, and a sticker that had lost its stick. I must have once placed them there, in a fragile, white box, because they meant something to me; because they conjured a memory. But staring at them now, I couldn’t recall what they stood for or why it had been so necessary to safely and secretly guard them.

With a few moments' consideration, I slid the tiny pieces into a shiny, black garbage bag. After consulting with mom about its origins, the porcelain dove box made its way into a pile destined for the Groves garage sale. (Note the passive voice.)

These knick-knacks—the music boxes, the wind chimes, the decorative dried chilies from Santa Fe, the blown glass whale, the friendship bracelets I wove with my 11-year-old hands, even the plastic spider ring—were once my treasures. They meant something to another version of me; to a person I no longer am but still find traces of in unfinished projects and in the little things that cover my shelves and keep me company.

Which will be the firsts to go when I next return here to purge my life, to lessen the literal and figurative weight that fills my secret spaces? Will it be the glittery star boxes that my cousins, Tess and Daniel, painted for me when they were younger? Will it be the tiny, stuffed, yellow bear that my student, Phil, gave me in Qingdao—one of the few teachers’ presents I was able to bring back across the ocean with me? Will I have forgotten his name by then, and all the others’?

Or, more likely, it will be the large seashells on my top shelf, which I removed from Mr. Ed’s mom’s house after she died—my first brush with cleaning out an old woman’s house and one of my only brushes with the hollow spaces that come in death’s wake. By the time I decide her echoing conch shell is doing me no good, we will probably have gone through both of my grandmothers’ houses, filling our rooms to the brim once again with the leftovers of their lives, with the treasures that mean everything to them and nothing to us.

In The Hurt Locker, the protagonist marvels at his son’s fascination with a jack-in-the-box; how that spunky toy—or any object, really—is enough to keep his young son captivated and content. “By the time you get to my age,” he says, “maybe it’s only one or two things” you really love.

So I’ve begun trading in my well-loved possessions—some stuffed animals, dolls, and games have been relegated to closet shelves; some are slated for the garage sale or Salvation Army; some are in the trash. My books remain—too precious to part with—but my real prizes now are shiny and foreign compared to my old favorites: the jewelry I acquired over four years of working for Barbara; my assortment of pictures of old and faraway friends; the pile of bracelets from Beijing and Qingdao, especially the celadon jade bangle Tracy gave me on my last day, even though it now lies shattered into two heartbreaking pieces. And finally, my maroon backpack gathering dust in the corner—the turtle-shell home that has served me so well in every corner of the world.

There was a time when this blue-carpeted room was my world—filled with my stuffed companions and curio comforts. But now, having a light load is what matters; having less cargo. So, one day, my turtle shell and I can once again slip off the face of the earth, in search of everything we can’t find within these walls.

This poem by Richard Wilbur is one of my absolute favorites. Its imagery and meaning struck me so much the first time I read it that I actually burst into tears.

For me, it conjures up a vision of the yellow Victorian farm house on Williamston Road on the way to my aunt’s house, a building that, since I was a kid, I have wanted to explore and inhabit. I imagine being The Writer of this poem, shut in the atelier of that yellow house, writing away, while my dad observes from distant creaky floorboards.

But it couldn’t be my dad, in actuality, because he doesn’t possess the deft touch of subtlety that this poem’s speaker enjoys. Rather, I wish it were him. Or in lieu of that option, I imagine myself with the speaker’s voice. I am not a father wishing “a lucky passage” to his daughter, but to a smaller version of myself—to a person who once coveted and honored and treasured small things, and who filled sheets and sheets of paper with thoughts and stories, just as the bigger version does now.

Grab the tissues. This one is startlingly beautiful.

The Writer

--Richard Wilbur

In her room at the prow of the house

Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;

And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,

We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creature

Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove

To the hard floor, or the desk-top,

And wait then, humped and bloody,

For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits

Rose when, suddenly sure,

It lifted off from a chair-back,

Beating a smooth course for the right window

And clearing the sill of the world.

It is always a matter, my darling,

Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish

What I wished you before, but harder.

All mimsy were the borogoves

The flurry of Alice-related articles that surrounded the release of Tim Burton’s latest film was probably the best thing that happened to me in early March and, of course, inspired me to post this zany, mythical poem.

I have a long-standing attachment to the Alice books—they are like old friends, entangled with mom and math and my time in England. When I studied in London, I visited Oxford and saw the tree under which Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) and the Liddell girls often sat, and the river where they went boating; at The British Library in London, I stumbled upon Carroll’s original Alice manuscripts and was enchanted by his scritchy notes in the margins, trying out different titles for his book; and the following Christmas, Mom gave me her ancient copy of the definitive Alice-work, The Annotated Alice, with notations by acclaimed mathematician and puzzle-maker, Martin Gardner.

When speaking of gyring and gambling in the wabe, I should also probably mention the first day of my advanced geometry class at Michigan, when my professor put this poem on a PowerPoint to demonstrate sets, and how promising that class seemed then during my rocky mathematics career. Thinking about all of it now still makes me a little sad. But even after abandoning math and teaching, and after seeing Burton’s ill-fitted Alice sequel with the Gholz brothers, I still have a soft pocket for Carroll’s works—and for anything that merges the lines of art and language and math. (See M.C. Escher and my favorite read, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, narrated by a lovable British boy who happens to have autism and who labels his chapters with prime numbers.)

The week Burton’s new movie came out also coincided with a wonderful, wacky reunion between me, Alex, and Sasha, who neither Alex nor I had seen for 10 years since we graduated from Covington and all went to separate high schools. Alex started playing Facebook-tag with Sasha back in December so, when she came home from Peru because her sister was having a baby, we all finally caught up in person. The last time I saw her she was a thirteen-year-old and now…she’s an aunt!

Somewhere during the course of the evening, Sasha turned to Alex and I and said: it’s funny how, even after 10 years, we all somehow ended up on the same page—she in Peru with the PeaceCorps, Alex recently returned from a year in Taiwan, me with my stints in China. And when a group of people—I kid you not—came into The Black Lotus dressed as The Queen of Hearts, The Mad Hatter, The Rabbit, and Alice, all three of us were whipped into equal flurries of excitement. The nonsense of our day-to-day lives…there is no language for it. But sometimes, people just get you.

So here is Lewis Carroll’s The Jabberwocky—full invented, blended, portmanteau words—and some excellent photos of me, Sasha, and Alex at my Bat Mitzvah in 1999. Because where would we all be today without a little absurdity, a few awkward slow dances, and the words chortle, burble, and galumphing?

"When I use a word,” says Humpty Dumpty, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."

The Jabberwocky

--Lewis Carroll

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:

Long time the manxome foe he sought --

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'

He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

Little Me and Little Sasha

Little Alex

All three of us are in this one!

and each will smile at the other's welcome

The last in a series of love-themed poems, here is Derek Walcott’s Love After Love. The poems this month progressed in an order unlike the phases of a relationship—first the nurturing, satisfying (or dissatisfying?) love of Billy Collins’ Osso Bucco; then the classic, overwhelming I carry your heart by e. e. cummings; followed by the flirty sentiments and deep-felt loss of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why. Finally, and perhaps my favorite of them all, is this poem about the loss of one love and the rediscovery of another—the love we come back to again and again: the love for ourselves.

Right now, I interpret this poem indirectly. (Isn’t that the beauty of poetry? A single poem can speak to us in so many different ways, at many different times in our lives.) I haven’t gone through a tumultuous breakup—though maybe a few losses—but here I am, greeting myself at my own door, in my own mirror, and I am beginning to smile at the welcome.

I am once again surrounded by things that feed me, things I had forgotten about thanks to time and distance—walls covered with familiar paintings; shelves of well-loved books; ceramic vases and pitchers and lopsided animals that I shaped with my own hands; the seashells mom and I painstakingly gathered on dozens of walks down Juno beach; and photographs of me at every age, carefully selected to fill the house when my scampering footsteps are far away.

Yesterday, Mom and I spent the entire evening and well into the night on our quiet pursuits. The snow was coming down silently on our woodsy, white backyard, while the back room was filled with churning creativity and my constantly streaming Ann Arbor radio. I sat at the long table, with art and books and photographs and the chess set I bought in China for company, and sketched for hours—jars, vases, tea sets, bowls, bottles, and sake sets that I will hopefully be able to make soon. My hands are itching to get back in some clay… Mom set up a batik silk-painting lab of sorts all around the room—with sponge brushes, containers of wax, huge sheets of paper, a wood painting frame, finished scarves draped over chairs—and I watched her, all night, exhibit the kind of quiet delight she once directed towards gardening and which I haven’t seen in a long time.

I could say a few things about our talk at lunch—about Bill Joy and the Michigan computing center, about law school, about that internet democracy firm in DC—or I could say how strange it is to be so quiet all the time. I could talk about the haphazard objects around the house and how I’m trying to do my part by getting rid of some of them, or how hearing Tchaikovsky on the radio made my legs crave dancing again. But I’m trying out this quiet thing. I’m doing something that’s hard for me, like everyone keeps telling me to, and it’s slowly becoming easier when I can pass the still, snowy evenings watching Star Wars with Alex or absorbed in art with mom.

There’s a reason this poem is quietly and simply one of the best mantras on love. And it’s the last line, my favorite in all of poetry. I assembled an anthology for a poetry class in college and I titled the entire thing after that one line—one thread to quietly pull everything together, one phrase that I am still trying to heed.

Love After Love

--Derek Walcott

The time will come

when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

the lion of contentment / has placed a warm heavy paw on my chest

I am failing big-time at posting on Mondays. I was in Florida with the parentals for about a week and managed to avoid the internet most of the time and it was actually... really nice. I'll cut straight to the details: Juno beach littered with man o' war jellyfish; lots of Scrabble with Mom in the evenings; subs from a real, honest-to-god, New York-style Italian deli that would make Tony Soprano proud; and several amazing dinners involving too much of only the good things--brie, bread, shrimp, steak, and, my favorite, tangy sweet key lime pie.
Maybe it's the Italian in me, or maybe it's just everyone, but food is so important to my happiness. In the last two days, Mom made chicken soup with tortellini, Alex and I had our ceremonial Noodles & Co. lunch, and the three former ESL-teachers-in-Asia went out for a rousing round of "cold, exhilarating wine." In this case, savory and delectable pinot noir from Vinotecca. Yum yum.
Today, Mom and I ventured into my favorite place on earth--Le Petit Prince at 14 and Pierce. It has been there for over 28 years and smells like a petit French heaven. We bought too many chocolat et amande tuiles, palmiers, gougere, and tasty, buttery noisette cookies, and if that weren't enough... Alex, Emily and I are off, once again, to toast our love for Asia with pho and nom bo kho (spicy papaya salad) at Da Nang in Clawson, followed by some brews at Black Lotus.
All I can think of right now is Jenny Howard always laughing at me for making such a ruckus when we went out to eat in Beijing with GIEU. I had to try everything, exclaim "it's so tasty!" (I now know how to say that in Chinese--hen hao chi) and then insist that everyone try a bite of the strange foods before us. So with chopsticks and palmiers in hand, "the lion of contentment" has certainly placed his heavy paw on my chest--and on my stomach.
Enjoy Billy Collins. His words are a feast of tasty, verbal treats. I can't help but crave bone marrow as I read this, and think of the gan guo (dry pot) restaurant in Qingdao where I first fell in love with "the leg of an angel..."

Osso Bucco
--Billy Collins
I love the sound of the bone against the plate
and the fortress-like look of it
lying before me in a moat of risotto,
the meat soft as the leg of an angel
who has lived a purely airborne existence.
And best of all, the secret marrow,
the invaded privacy of the animal
prized out with a knife and swallowed down
with cold, exhilarating wine.

I am swaying now in the hour after dinner,
a citizen tilted back on his chair,
a creature with a full stomach--
something you don't hear much about in poetry,
that sanctuary of hunger and deprivation.
you know: the driving rain, the boots by the door,
small birds searching for berries in winter.

But tonight, the lion of contentment
has placed a warm heavy paw on my chest,
and I can only close my eyes and listen
to the drums of woe throbbing in the distance
and the sound of my wife's laughter
on the telephone in the next room,
the woman who cooked the savory osso buco,
who pointed to show the butcher the ones she wanted.
She who talks to her faraway friend
while I linger here at the table
with a hot, companionable cup of tea,
feeling like one of the friendly natives,
a reliable guide, maybe even the chief's favorite son.

Somewhere, a man is crawling up a rocky hillside
on bleeding knees and palms, an Irish penitent
carrying the stone of the world in his stomach;
and elsewhere people of all nations stare
at one another across a long, empty table.

But here, the candles give off their warm glow,
the same light that Shakespeare and Izaac Walton wrote by,
the light that lit and shadowed the faces of history.
Only now it plays on the blue plates,
the crumpled napkins, the crossed knife and fork.

In a while, one of us will go up to bed
and the other will follow.
Then we will slip below the surface of the night
into miles of water, drifting down and down
to the dark, soundless bottom
until the weight of dreams pulls us lower still,
below the shale and layered rock,
beneath the strata of hunger and pleasure,
into the broken bones of the earth itself,
into the marrow of the only place we know.

of emptiness, of fullness perfectly contained

One week into The Post and I’m already behind. Insert comment on Miriam-lateness here.

Ok, here’s a real-life conversation from last week…

Me: I was supposed to be born in mid-October, so I was a few days early.

Allison: You? Early?! I guess it happened that one time aaaand it’s never happened since! (buh dum chh)

I didn’t post on Monday, as promised, because I was sick and still went to work. Bad move. I’m paying for it now. I dragged myself to a clinic this afternoon to find out what's wrong (I've been sick three times in four weeks; turns out I have a sinus infection and an ear infection) and then I went on a quest for the ultimate medicine: Matzah ball soup.

Whenever I'm sick, all I want is chicken soup. My dad sent me a bunch of Hanukkah presents last month, including a gift card for a delicatessen in Tenleytown, so I managed to get carry-out today. I cashed in big-time--two containers of matzah ball soup, a turkey melt, an everything bagel, blintzes, rugelach, and a Dr. Brown’s cream soda. Now I have enough food to last me through the weekend--and hopefully through this illness.

So my question for you is: What are your favorite comfort foods??! And why? (This seems like the kind of question my roommate would like. She's moving out tomorrow and it’s going to get lonely around here!!)

My comfort foods are:

*Mom’s chicken soup with acini di pepe

*Mom’s polenta with spicy Italian sausage

*Mom’s roast beef and mashed potatoes

*Mom’s cornbread and Irish soda bread

*Mom’s oatmeal (notice a trend here?)

*Chinese food--onion pancakes, rou chuan, guan guan mien from Tai Dong, etc.

*And of course, kreplach or matzah ball soup

Comfort foods remind us of where we're from... So what are your favorites?

This poem has been one of my favorites since Mrs. Greenbaum’s Advanced Writing class senior year. It was a great class--probably my favorite at Groves. We wrote a lot. We read a lot--both poetry and prose--and I knew I loved Mrs. Greenbaum when we read a short story by Charlie Baxter, who was my mom’s professor in college. Emily, Caitlyn, Kate, and I were in the class together, which gives me the warm fuzzies because Caitlyn and I had brunch in Woodley last week, and almost exactly a year ago, Emily and I were in Southeast Asia.

I like the simplicity of this poem and how everyday it is--like a snapshot out of Alan Dugan’s life. It makes me think of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks and of being in New York--one of the places I'm from, in a way.

And most of all, as a perpetually-late Libra, I like the imperfect metaphor of perfect balance.

Closing Time at the Second Avenue Deli
--Alan Dugan
This is the time of night at the delicatessen
when the manager is balancing
a nearly empty ketchup bottle
upside-down on a nearly full ketchup bottle
and spreading his hands slowly away
from the perfect balance like shall I say
a priest blessing the balance, the achievement
of perfect emptiness, of perfect fullness? No,
this is a kosher delicatessen. The manager
is not like. He is not like a priest,
he is not even like a rabbi, he
is not like anyone else except the manager
as he turns to watch the waitress
discussing the lamb stew with my wife,
how most people eat the whole thing,
they don’t take it home in a container,
as she mops up the tables, as the
cashier shall I say balances out? No. The computer does all that. This
is not the time for metaphors. This is the time
to turn out the lights, and yes,
imagine it, those two ketchup bottles
will stand there all night long
as acrobatic metaphors of balance,
of emptiness, of fullness perfectly contained,
of any metaphor you wish unless
the manager snaps his fingers at the door,
goes back, and separates them for the night
from that unnatural balance, and the store goes dark
as my wife says we should take a cab
or walk, the stew is starting to drip already.
Shall I say that the container can not
contain the thing contained anymore? No.
Just that the lamb stew is leaking all across town
in one place: it is leaking on the floor of the taxi-cab,
and that somebody is going to pay for this ride.